HES1 and nasopharyngeal carcinoma: Taken together, our results revealed a negative association between high expression of Hes1/fibronectin/snail and low expression of PTEN/E-cadherin in NPC cells, supporting a model in which Hes1 transcriptionally inhibits PTEN expression to activate the PI3K/Akt/GSK-3β/snail signaling pathway and downregulate E-cadherin (Figure 7).